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CytomX Therapeutics Announces Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Provides Business Update

Global News Feed Comments Off on CytomX Therapeutics Announces Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Provides Business Update | November 5th, 2020

Mechelen, Belgium and Warsaw, Poland, 5 November 2020, 22.15 CET – Galapagos NV (Euronext & NASDAQ: GLPG) and OncoArendi Therapeutics SA (WSE: OAT), announced that they have signed an exclusive collaboration and license agreement for the global development and commercialization of OncoArendi’s OATD-01. OATD-01 is a Phase 2-ready chitotriosidase/acidic mammalian chitinase (CHIT1/AMCase) inhibitor for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and other diseases with a fibrotic component.

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OncoArendi and Galapagos enter into exclusive collaboration on chitinase inhibitors in fibrosis

Global News Feed Comments Off on OncoArendi and Galapagos enter into exclusive collaboration on chitinase inhibitors in fibrosis | November 5th, 2020

-- Advances Phase 1/2 clinical trial of MRT5005 for the treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF) with resumption of COVID-impacted enrollment and dosing ---- Presented promising preclinical data at NACFC from next-generation CF program that leverages advances in mRNA technology --

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Translate Bio Announces Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Reviews Recent Progress

Global News Feed Comments Off on Translate Bio Announces Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Reviews Recent Progress | November 5th, 2020

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cidara Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: CDTX), a biotechnology company developing long-acting therapeutics designed to transform the standard of care for patients facing serious fungal or viral infections, today reported financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2020, and provided an update on its corporate activities.

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Cidara Provides Corporate Update and Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results

Global News Feed Comments Off on Cidara Provides Corporate Update and Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results | November 5th, 2020

Finance Veteran Strengthens Management Team; Quarter-over-Quarter Net Revenue up 34%; Year-over-Year down 31%

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Nephros Appoints Dan D’Agostino as CFO and Reports Third Quarter Financial Results

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BELTSVILLE, Md., Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NextCure, Inc. (Nasdaq: NXTC), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to discovering and developing novel, first-in-class immunomedicines to treat cancer and other immune-related diseases, today reported third quarter 2020 financial results and provided a business update.

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NextCure Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results

Global News Feed Comments Off on NextCure Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results | November 5th, 2020

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Molecular Templates, Inc. (Nasdaq: MTEM, “Molecular Templates,” “MTEM” or “the Company”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of proprietary targeted biologic therapeutics, engineered toxin bodies (ETBs), today reported financial results for the third quarter of 2020 and an update on its clinical pipeline.

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Molecular Templates, Inc. Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Provides a Corporate Update

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HIGH POINT, N.C., Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- vTv Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq:VTVT) today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020, and provided an update on the progress of its clinical programs.

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vTv Therapeutics Announces 2020 Third Quarter Financial Results and Update

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Conference call and webcast on Friday, November 6 at 2:30 pm CET/8:30 am ET

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ERYTECH Provides Business Update and Reports Financial Results for the Third Quarter of 2020

Global News Feed Comments Off on ERYTECH Provides Business Update and Reports Financial Results for the Third Quarter of 2020 | November 5th, 2020

NEW YORK, Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cellectis (Euronext Growth: ALCLS – Nasdaq: CLLS), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing immunotherapies based on allogeneic gene-edited CAR T-cells (UCART), today announced its results for the three-month and nine-month periods ending September 30, 2020.

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Cellectis Provides Business Update and Reports Financial Results for Third Quarter and First Nine Months 2020

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WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kane Biotech Inc. (TSX-V:KNE; OTCQB:KNBIF) (“Kane Biotech”) today announced that it has entered into a one year credit agreement (the “Credit Agreement”) with Pivot Financial Inc. (“Pivot”) for a non-revolving term loan in the aggregate amount of $1,480,000.00 (the “Credit Facility”).

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Kane Biotech Enters into Credit Facility with Pivot Financial

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia and SEATTLE, Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chinook Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: KDNY), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of precision medicines for kidney diseases, today announced third quarter 2020 financial results and provided a business update.

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Chinook Therapeutics Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Provides Business Update

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BRIDGEWATER, N.J., Nov. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Osmotica Pharmaceuticals plc (Nasdaq: OSMT) (“Osmotica” or the “Company”), a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company, today announced that the Company will release its 2020 third quarter financial results on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, after the close of the U.S. financial markets.

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Osmotica Pharmaceuticals plc to Provide Third Quarter 2020 Business and Financial Update on November 10, 2020

Global News Feed Comments Off on Osmotica Pharmaceuticals plc to Provide Third Quarter 2020 Business and Financial Update on November 10, 2020 | November 5th, 2020

Call scheduled for November 9th at 8:30 a.m. EST Call scheduled for November 9th at 8:30 a.m. EST

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Genocea to Host Investor Call Highlighting New GEN-009 Clinical and Immunogenicity Data to be Presented at Virtual SITC 2020

Global News Feed Comments Off on Genocea to Host Investor Call Highlighting New GEN-009 Clinical and Immunogenicity Data to be Presented at Virtual SITC 2020 | November 5th, 2020

Merger completed with Rexahn Pharmaceuticals creating a Nasdaq-listed Biopharmaceutical Company Focused on Advancing Ocuphire’s Late-Stage Clinical Pipeline of Ophthalmic Drug Candidates

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Ocuphire Pharma Completes Transactions and Begins Trading on Nasdaq as OCUP

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MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers identified that blocking an alternative energy pathway for T-cells after hematopoietic stem cell transplant helps reduce graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in an animal model of leukemia.

Xue-Zhong Yu, M.D., who also is associate director of Basic Science at Hollings, and collaborators at the Indiana University School of Medicine discovered that donor T-cells must have the key enzyme lysosomal acid lipase in order to induce GVHD.

The Yu laboratory focuses on understanding the biological balance between GVHD and graft-versus-leukemia effect. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is used as a treatment option for some leukemia patients. T-cells in stem cell grafts from a donor are given to a leukemia patient in order to kill the cancer and reboot the patient's immune system. GVHD is a big clinical challenge because the donor T-cells, which come from the bone marrow, can attack the patient's organs. Anywhere from 30% to 70% of patients develop acute GVHD after allogeneic bone marrow transplant and 15% die.

"When we deal with hematopoietic cell transplant, it is an important balance - blocking GVHD while still allowing T-cells to do their job and control the cancer," Yu said.

Each cell in our body has its own metabolic process. Cells convert the food that is eaten into energy in order to perform their intended functions. However, cellular metabolism is often altered in various diseases. Yu researches T-cell metabolism in order to understand the balance between graft-versus-host and graft-versus-leukemia responses.

Most cells in our body require oxygen to create energy efficiently. However, this research focused on lipid, or fat, metabolism. T-cells have special metabolic processes: Sometimes they multiply so rapidly that they need an extra source of energy from free fatty acids.

Lysosomal acid lipase is an enzyme that breaks the large lipids and cholesterol into individual free fatty acid building blocks. If that enzyme is missing, there are not enough free fatty acids for energy production. This changes the T-cell metabolism, which in turn changes T-cell function.

Clinically, broad spectrum immunosuppression drugs (steroids and rapamycin) are still used as the first line of care in patients with severe GVHD. However, Yu and collaborators hypothesized that changing T-cell metabolism could reduce GVHD after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

"We know that the gut is the primary organ affected by GVHD. Since the gut has less oxygen, the T-cells rely on free fatty acids and must use lysosomal acid lipase. We thought if we could remove or block the activity of that, we could reduce GVHD in the gut."

The Yu Laboratory collaborated with the Indiana University School of Medicine and used a lysosomal acid lipase-deficient mouse model. T-cells lacking lysosomal acid lipase were given to mice with leukemia. As a control, T-cells with lysosomal acid lipase from normal mice were given to another group of leukemia mice. Strikingly, the mice that received the T-cells without lysosomal acid lipase did not get severe GVHD. Additionally, the T-cells from the donor lysosomal acid lipase-deficient bone marrow still killed the leukemia cells.

To increase the clinical translational potential of the work, orlistat, the FDA-approved lysosomal acid lipase inhibitor was also tested in the leukemia model. Mice with leukemia were treated with orlistat every other day after receiving bone marrow from normal mouse donors. Similar to the first experiment with the lysosomal acid lipase-deficient bone marrow, blocking the activity of lysosomal acid lipase with orlistat greatly reduced GVHD while the graft-versus-leukemia effect was preserved.

Additionally, the researchers discovered that inhibiting the lysosomal acid lipase enzyme with orlistat reduced the number of pathogenic T-cells and increased the number of regulatory T-cells. The pathogenic T-cells are the ones that cause GVHD. Regulatory T-cells are one of the "braking mechanisms" of the immune system. They help to reduce the activity of the pathogenic T-cells and prevent GVHD damage.

Therefore, blocking lysosomal acid lipase activity with orlistat preferentially stopped the donor T-cells from damaging the gut but allowed the T-cells to function during circulation and kill the leukemia cells.

The researchers' future plan is to look deeper at the biological mechanisms. For example, it is not clear how the loss or inhibition of lysosomal acid lipase affects the other metabolites in T-cells. To move this finding closer to the clinic, Yu explained that human cells can be used in a special mouse model that recreates the human immune environment.

"Looking at the immune cells in the gut was technically challenging. However, the results were exciting because our hypothesis was validated. These results encourage us to continue studying this in order to provide better treatment options to patients."

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Blocking energy pathway reduces GVHD while retaining anti-cancer effects of T-cells - Science Codex

Bone Marrow Stem Cells Comments Off on Blocking energy pathway reduces GVHD while retaining anti-cancer effects of T-cells – Science Codex | November 5th, 2020

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The latest research report on the Stem Cell Banking market assesses the major factors influencing industry growth with respect to the competitive dynamics and geographical reach. It also ensembles the challenges prevalent in this industry vertical and identifies opportunities that will further aid business expansion. Further, the report revisits all areas of the business to cover the impact of COVID-19 pandemic so as to assist stakeholders in devising new strategies and reinforcing their position in the market.

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Latest Study explores the Stem Cell Banking Market Witness Highest Growth in nea - GroundAlerts.com

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David Shaw walks into the hospital room and takes a seat next to the bed. He does this nearly every day, right around lunchtime.

He looks at his younger brother, Eric, tubes snaking across his arms, machines beeping and whirring. Eric does not look like Eric anymore, his skin darkened, scars deepened, features altered. They both know this but never mention it.

Eric is dying, a rare, aggressive skin cancer rampaging through his body with such ferocity that his doctors are nearly out of options. Radiation failed. Chemotherapy failed. Two bone marrow transplants failed.

As Stanford's head football coach, David Shaw is relied on to always know what to say, how to say it and when to say it; but he cannot find the words now that he and his brother are staring down what seems to be an inevitable fate.

"What do you say, where you think you've pulled at the last thread and there are no more threads?" David said. "All I could tell him was that I loved him and that I was there for him. The rest of it was really just ... I thought it was only a matter of time before he passed away."

Two years later, what happened between David and Eric remains real, present and raw -- changing their entire relationship, redefining what it means to be a brother. The words are still difficult to say, so they tip-toe around the crushing physical and mental toll Eric's cancer took on them.

David and Eric are sure to think about it all this weekend, when Stanford opens its season at Oregon on Saturday. Because the last time the Cardinal visited Eugene, neither one knew whether Eric would live or die.

After Stanford came from behind to win that game 38-31 in overtime, David delivered a message at the end of his postgame television interview, looking at the camera and saying, "To my brotherEric: I love you." He tapped the lime green pin on his black Stanford sweatshirt before he left the screen.

When Shaw became head coach at Stanford in 2011, it was the culmination of a family journey. His father was a longtime coach there; David played receiver for the Cardinal and eventually returned as an assistant under Jim Harbaugh. The entire Shaw family -- parents Willie and Gay, along with David, Eric and their sister, Tawnya -- all call the Bay Area home.

To this day, David says the day he was introduced as coach was "one of the better days in all our lives."

Yet something started to happen to Eric that no one could quite figure out. That same year, Eric found strange looking spots on his torso. His wife, Crystal, noticed the first one under his arm. Maybe it was eczema, they thought. Then the spots started to spread. He went to the doctor. They prescribed an ointment, but the spots kept popping up, until they covered his entire body. Eventually, tumors started to grow. It looked as if someone had pushed marbles under his skin. Doctors remained confounded. Eric itched uncontrollably, insatiably. His skin itched so badly, it became difficult to put on clothes, shower, sleep and go to work. He eventually needed sleep medication so he could get uninterrupted rest.

Even then, he itched subconsciously, only realizing what happened when he woke up in the morning to find his arms and sheets covered in blood. Some nights, he tried to sleep on his forearms so his body wouldn't touch the sheets, because his skin grew too sensitive to any touch. At one point, he had more than 30 open wounds on his body.

"It's something that's so pervasive and so destructive that a lot of people have mental problems -- you can't do anything without extreme pain," Eric said. "You bleed a lot through the tumors, through the lesions, through the scratching. A lot of people don't survive, really, because of the mental stress that comes with it."

Doctors had a hard time diagnosing his disease because it is often confused with psoriasis, eczema or other skin conditions. Eventually, they determined he had a rare form of skin cancer called mycosis fungoides, a type of T-cell lymphoma that affects one in 6 million people in the United States and Europe. At the time, Eric Shaw was 38.

In 2013, he and Crystal pushed for a referral to Stanford Cancer Center, which has leading experts in the disease. Mycosis fungoides is so rare, it accounts for only 4% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases; among those who suffer from it, only 20% have the type of itching Eric experienced. Rarer still is to find it in people under the age of 40, and African American men often end up with the worst prognosis. All the odds were firmly against him.

"When you first hear skin cancer, your mind doesn't go too far," David said. "So initially I was like, 'There are creams and other minor surgeries. I think it'll be OK.' And then Eric said, 'No, this is not the typical skin cancer. This is inside my body. This is inside the layers of my skin, and it's not one spot. It's everywhere.'

"I didn't really get it for weeks after that because, rectifying something that I didn't think was so serious to [then thinking] ... 'Oh my gosh. So this is really cancer. This is really scary now.' It took a long time for that to sink in."

David turned it over in his mind. He was the big brother, the protector, the one who always made sure Eric would be OK. They were supposed to raise their kids together, grow old together, and reminisce about the randomness of a life spent together.

He kept coming back to one thought: You're not supposed to lose your little brother.

David and Eric Shaw grew particularly close as children as they moved from place to place when their father, Willie, took new coaching jobs. Tawnya, their older sister, fit in anywhere socially. But David and Eric, who is two years younger, stuck together.

"Like a pair," David said.

They loved riding their bikes and, when they moved to Arizona, they took advantage of the wide-open spaces in the new development where they lived. They rode for miles and miles, setting up their own ramps and doing tricks and wheelies, visiting friends along the way before returning home after dark. They played sports, too, and though David loved football as much as their dad, the basketball court is where the brothers had their epic battles.

"I was always kind of a little bit stronger and I'll never forget the last time we played one-on-one basketball," David said. "He just got better than me, and he won, and once I got over the anger and disappointment, I was proud because my younger brother had grown and was gaining confidence."

Said Eric: "I wanted nothing more than to beat him, and he wanted nothing more than to keep beating me. But, during those times, it was just us, it was me and him. He was my best friend."

David went on to play at Stanford and eventually got into coaching, against his mother's best wishes. Eric did not pursue a career in athletics. He went to San Diego State and got into a career in marketing at a financial services company, where his gregarious nature, big smile and easy laugh made him a perfect fit. Though their personalities are different -- David is stoic and introspective, Eric makes anyone feel as if they have been friends forever -- they are grounded in the same values they learned at a young age: family and faith above everything else.

Those principles only grew stronger after they found themselves in the Bay Area as adults.

After David was hired by Stanford, the entire Shaw family made it clear it would always be around to support him. Family members all have a standing invitation to come for dinner on Tuesdays. And they always attend home football games, waving and hugging David during the team's pregame walk, cheering from the stands, and then waiting for some time together once the game ends.

Even as Eric grew sick, he made it a point to go cheer for his big brother. "It's not just the football game. Our family comes together," he said. "We celebrate, we come to watch the game and cheer the team on and support David. And then afterwards, win or lose, we all wait for him to come out. It's a family day. It's been wonderful to share that experience with David."

Stanford eventually drew them even closer, and it had nothing to do with football.

Eric did not understand the gravity of his situation until his first meeting in 2013 with the doctors at Stanford Cancer Center. They put it bluntly: He had such an aggressive form of the disease that he needed immediate treatment. They would start with total skin radiation, preparing Eric to lose his hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails and toenails.

If that did not work, they would try chemotherapy next.

"All these thoughts are running through your mind," Crystal said. "'Is he going to make it? Is it going to work? What's going to happen?' At the time, our youngest daughter was 3 months old, so it was pretty overwhelming. We were just putting our lives together and then boom: you're in the middle of this cancer war."

The next week, Eric took a leave of absence from work and began four-times-a-week trips from their home east of Palo Alto, California, to Stanford Hospital, often driving as many as three hours one way in traffic. When he arrived, he went into a box and his whole body was exposed to the radiation light for about an hour. Then, he would make the drive back home to see Crystal and their four kids -- Caleb Michael, Jared Spann-Shaw, Madison Shaw and Olivia Shaw.

The radiation charred his skin. He lost weight. When he looked in the mirror, Eric no longer recognized the man looking back at him.

"Nothing prepares you for something like this," he said. "Knowing that other people were looking at me and knowing that something was very wrong, that was a daily grind to get myself up out of bed and get ready for the day, knowing that that was going to be my life."

He did this for three straight months, all to keep the disease from growing to a point where it would kill him. It worked for a short time, but the disease came back more aggressively six months later. Doctors moved on to chemotherapy treatments, some of them experimental, but also began discussing the last-resort option: a bone marrow transplant.

David and Tawnya immediately volunteered to become donors, and underwent testing. In most cases, siblings are the best chance at a donor match. Unfortunately, in their case, neither was close. On a 10-point match scale, Tawnya registered a 3, David a 5. Neither qualified to donate.

"I wanted to jump to the front of the line and say, 'Whatever I have to do, whatever you have to take out of me, however you have to do it, just do it,'" David said. "For them to come back and say that you're not a strong enough match was disheartening. It hurt me. The fact that we had to put our trust and faith in people that we didn't know, and that we're going to have to go out to registries and try to find someone who was a better match than I was, that uncertainty, and that doubt, it's hard to keep it at bay at that point. It starts to creep in."

Doctors eventually found two donors whom they believed could work, but they were not perfect matches. In early 2018, Eric and his family moved into a two-bedroom apartment near Stanford Hospital to prepare for the transplant. For three months, he went through radiation, then chemotherapy to prepare his body to accept the donor cells.

He underwent the transplant in April, feeling confident and inspired it would work. After a month, doctors did an initial check to see how many of the donor cells had survived the transplant.

None survived.

"It was like I never even had the transplant," Eric said. "That was so devastating. We just knew it was going to work. I mean, we're people of faith, and we knew everybody was praying for us, and that we were praying that this six-year journey was going to finally be over. And it wasn't over. It was crushing for them to say, 'It didn't work. We're going to have to try again.'"

The second attempt happened in September. Crystal bought lime green pins for the family to wear for lymphoma awareness. Without telling Eric or Crystal, David decided he would wear his on his shirt for the 2018 football season. In addition to that, he had lime green and yellow ribbons placed on the back of Stanford helmets as a way to show support for both cancer patients and cancer survivors.

He told his team that his brother was fighting cancer, and briefly mentioned the helmet ribbons publicly during an early-season news conference. But beyond that, David kept the severity of what was happening to his brother to himself, masking his growing nervousness, fear and anxiety as the clock ticked toward the next transplant. He had a hard time processing what was happening. He did not want to put that at the feet of his players, or his staff.

The doctors used the same donor cells that failed the first time for the second transplant on Sept. 11, 2018, because that was the only option available. But this time, doctors used even stronger drugs to prepare Eric's body to receive the donor cells -- hoping that would do enough to stop his immune system from attacking them.

When Stanford played Oregon on Sept. 22, no one in the Shaw family knew whether the transplant had worked. But the situation was more dire than the first transplant. The stronger chemotherapy caused major complications, and Eric became severely ill.

David coached the game with this in the back of his mind. Stanford rallied from a 21-7 deficit to win an overtime thriller, moving to 4-0 on the season, with a top-10 matchup against Notre Dame the following week. Back in Palo Alto, Eric watched the entire game alone in an apartment he rented near the hospital, the comeback buoying his spirits.

He had no idea his brother would speak to him through the television until he heard the words, "To my brother Eric ..."

"In that moment, I didn't feel any sickness at all," Eric said. "I can't really describe what I felt, just how proud I am of him and how awesome it made me feel that he would do that for me."

Said David: "If that transplant didn't work, I didn't know how many more games he was going to be able to see. That was an opportunity for me on national TV to speak to him, to say to my brother that against the odds, we came back and throughout the entire game, I was thinking about him."

Eric soon returned to Stanford Hospital. The chemotherapy destroyed his blood system, so he needed daily blood transfusions to stay alive. It came as no surprise when doctors told him the second transplant had failed. They had no plan now, no other donor options. David came by to visit as often as he could, but he had a hard time finding the words to say to his dying brother.

"I thought about Crystal. I thought about their kids," Shaw said. "I thought about, 'How can we help?' And then I kept going, 'We just can't get there. There has to be something else.' And we all prayed and we all comforted each other and trusted the doctors and prayed for the doctors. And just kept saying, 'Just tell us whatever options there are. Just tell us what to do and we'll do it.'"

During the day, Eric had his mother, Crystal, David, or David's wife, Kori, at his side, helping to keep his mind off what was happening to him. But in the evenings, when he was alone in his hospital room, he couldn't help but think about the dwindling medical options and his own death, slowly accepting what he believed would inevitably come.

Over seven years, everything the doctors tried had failed, and the disease always came back more aggressively. He felt exhausted in every possible way, desperate to feel better. He didn't want to die. All he wanted to do was get better, and see his kids again, hug his wife and go home. But that possibility seemed as far off as the stars.

"The doctors couldn't help us," Eric said. "They had lost all hope. There was nothing left, but we were in the deepest part of the valley, and there was nobody there but God. I said, 'You're going to take me off this Earth.' And he told me, 'Eric, you're not going to die.' That was the point at which my faith really took over, and I really had true peace."

His team of doctors huddled together again and came up with a plan many of their colleagues questioned, simply because they had never attempted it. In mid-October of 2018, they told Eric they wanted to try a third transplant.

Only this time, they wanted David to be the donor and they had only weeks to make it happen.

Eric thought, "Are they trying to kill me?"

When David was initially rejected, doctors had worked for 25 years to find a way to do half-match transplants but had virtually no success. By 2018, doctors explained that a different way to do the transplant had emerged, opening up the potential to try it with Eric. These transplants, called haploidentical transplants, typically use donor cells from a family member.

Dr. Wen-Kai Weng, Eric's bone marrow transplant physician, explained, "It was relatively new at this time. We decided to go ahead, because we knew if we didn't do it, the disease would really come back with a vengeance."

No one had ever done a third transplant with donor cells at Stanford.

"If he didn't go for this risk, he wouldn't be here," said Dr. Youn Kim, who treated Eric and heads Stanford's multidisciplinary Cutaneous Lymphoma Clinic/Program. "He wouldn't be living."

Doctors told Shaw there was a 15% chance he would not survive the transplant itself. If he did survive it, there was only about a 30% to 40% chance the donor cells would work. Compared to much steeper survival odds with no transplant at all, the decision -- filled with multiple layers of danger -- did not feel risky at all.

They had to try.

"They might have told us what the odds were, and I honestly just pushed it out of my brain," David said. "If this is the Hail Mary, hey, we're going to drop back and throw it as far as we can and send prayers along with it and hope that it works."

Without hesitation, David said to his brother, "Tell me what I need to do."

Stanford gathered in its team hotel early on Oct. 27 to begin final preparations before hosting Washington State later that day. David checked in for a 9 a.m. meeting and when it finished, he checked out of the hotel without saying a word. He walked toward the back exit, careful to make sure no one saw him, and snuck out the door to a waiting car.

Shaw sat in the passenger seat, headed toward campus and Stanford Hospital, praying all the while that what he was about to do would work.

He arrived at the hospital and was hooked up to an IV for the first dose of medication. This would not be the more traditional bone marrow transplant, where cells are extracted with a needle through the hips. Rather, the medication flowing through the IV would stimulate his body to overproduce the stem cells needed for the transplant, flooding his blood with them. The cells would then be extracted from his blood, and transplanted into Eric.

Doctors told him to expect to start feeling joint pain and tiredness within 24 hours. Those symptoms would grow only stronger over the coming days, when he came in for more medication. They told him he should stay off his feet, rest and remain hydrated.

That would be nice, David thought. But he had a game to coach. Only two people inside the program knew he had gone that morning: assistant athletic director for football operations Callie Dale, who drove him to the hospital, and defensive coordinator Lance Anderson.

"The way that I do my job, I work really hard not to make it about me," David said. "Although I wanted my team to know what my family was going through, college football is about the student-athletes. I wanted them to focus on what they needed to do. I didn't want to pull from that. I didn't want to, all of a sudden, now make it about me and my family."

A few hours later, he returned to the team hotel and acted as if he had been there the entire day, speaking nothing about his trip to the hospital. Shaw put on his lime green pin and made his way toward the bus. The short ride to the stadium felt long that day. His mind wandered before returning to the flip card in front of him.

As he exited the bus and finished the walk to the stadium, his two young nieces ran up to him. They squeezed him, holding on longer than usual, as if they knew their Uncle David was their only option, too.

He worried players would notice him moving around so slowly. If they did, no one said a word. Shaw kept pushing the pain aside, shoving his emotions down deep, saying prayers every chance he got.

On Wednesday, Shaw woke up and was so lethargic, he felt as if he was moving like a sloth. He went to the hospital for the final procedure: extracting the cells from his blood. Shaw wore comfortable clothes, arranged his pillows and settled in for a long day ahead. Doctors hooked him up to a machine that would do the work through two IVs: One took his blood so the needed donor cells could be siphoned out; the other IV would put the blood back in his body.

Eric rested on another floor in the same hospital.

David worked on his game plan, watched a few movies and occasionally stared at his own blood in the IVs, willing it to save his brother. He kept saying to himself over and over again, "God, I hope this works."

After eight hours, he was finished. Shaw then went out to practice.

"I remember walking up to him and just asking him, 'How are you doing, how are you feeling?'" Anderson said. "I could see it in him that he wasn't his normal self. He paused for a little bit and then he's like, 'I'm OK. A little bit tired, but I'm OK.' You know, just trying to put the most positive light that he could on it."

The next day, Nov. 1, 2018, Shaw went back to the hospital. It was transplant day, and he had to be with Eric to witness what they hoped would be a miracle. David and Crystal watched as Eric received a transfusion of David's stem cells, a shimmering light pink fluid flowing into his body. They sang and prayed. Already, they had received one small bit of good news: Doctors extracted 28 million cells from David's blood, about 20 million more than what they had hoped to get.

Stanford traveled the following day to Seattle, for a game against Washington. David felt guilty for leaving, but he knew there was nothing else he could do. Eric struggled in the hospital, not only from the transplant, but from the heavy chemo and radiation doctors used to prepare his body for the new cells.

Eric ran a fever of 105 degrees and vomited for days. The pain grew so intense he was put on a morphine drip and was in and out of consciousness. In Seattle, Shaw remembers being locked into the game, "except for those little moments where my heart was with my brother."

Stanford lost another heartbreaker, 27-23.

"I know us losing had nothing to do with everything David was going through," Dale said. "But just piling that on with everything else he was dealing with, it was a lot for him. He brought that up many times, about how Eric would tell him the biggest excitement for him every week was watching us play and watching us win. I know David had a lot of pressure on himself, amongst the pressure he already has as a head coach, to win for Eric. And I know that every time he did, he really felt like it was for him. And when we came up short, I know he was probably even harder on himself than he normally would have been."

Back at Stanford, David visited Eric when he could. But the waiting game took an increasing mental toll. David prides himself on his ability to compartmentalize, to focus on the only thing in front of him. He never spaces out, and he rarely gets emotional. But Shaw was falling apart on the inside.

He often found himself staring at cut-ups of red zone plays, not realizing the film had been paused for 20 minutes while his mind drifted off. Whenever that happened, he would stop and call someone, either his brother, his wife, his mother or Crystal just to see how they were doing.

"There were times where I thought life was slow motion, but it was actually moving and I was the one who was in slow motion," David said. "I found myself sometimes saying, 'Is this real? Is this really happening? This shouldn't happen.'"

In the middle of every single meeting, in the middle of every single film session, he silently prayed, "God help my brother. Just please let this one work."

"I look back now and I know more of everything that was going on and the situation," Anderson said. "I realized how much he was dealing with and how much he had to bear that week. And it's amazing that he was able to go through that week without really letting any of us really know exactly what he was going through and what a big deal this really was."

Within a few weeks, Eric started to turn a corner. Though they did not know whether the transplant had worked just yet, he showed enough improvement to leave the hospital after 52 days. David arrived for the big day, and Eric slowly put on a protective mask before shuffling to a waiting wheelchair. Doctors, nurses and support staff lined the hallway, clapping and cheering.

David cries when recalling that moment, his pent-up emotions flooding out as he describes it publicly for the first time.

"This is my little brother, after years of cancer, getting to leave the hospital," Shaw said, his voice quavering. He pauses to wipe tears from his eyes. "The nurses were crying. The doctors were crying. Because a few months earlier, they were preparing us for him to die. And he got to go home."

Three days later, doctors met with Eric and Crystal to deliver the results from the transplant. After only 27 days, Eric had none of his own blood coursing through his body.

It was all David's.

Eric picked up the phone.

"Dave," Eric said. "You have a twin. We're truly blood brothers."

Eric, who turns 46 on Friday, has lived a fairly normal life since he was declared cancer free on Jan. 1, 2019, although the coronavirus pandemic has limited how often the Shaw family can see each other.

In September, they decided to get together to celebrate all of their recent birthdays at David's house. They stayed outdoors, socially distanced, with masks on. Eric and David allowed themselves a hug, their heads turned to the side.

"Every time I see him, I just smile, you know? Because he gets to be here," David said.

Link:
'We're truly blood brothers': Stanford coach David Shaw and his recent fight to save his brother, Eric - KGO-TV

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Taipei, Nov. 5 (CNA) An Indonesian migrant worker who received a stem cell transplant in Taiwan in June thanked the nation on Thursday for expediting her treatment by lifting travel restrictions for her family amid COVID-19 thereby facilitating the operation that saved her life.

At a press conference that day to celebrate being discharged from the hospital, 23-year-old Nina Herlina thanked Taiwan for giving her a new lease of life and said her treatment was a testament to Taiwan's healthcare capabilities. In November last year, Nina began suffering from bouts of menorrhagia that lasted for about 20 days and came with symptoms that included dizziness, tiredness, and fever.

In February, she turned to the Taiwan International Workers' Association (TIWA), a local NGO that promotes migrant workers' rights when she was fired, shortly after a doctor diagnosed her as suffering from aplastic anemia, an autoimmune disease in which the bone marrow stops making new blood cells. With the help of the TIWA, the young woman was allowed to remain in Taiwan, where she had worked as a caregiver since October 2018.

In March, she was confirmed as having severe aplastic anemia, requiring an allogeneic stem cell transplant to treat the disease, according to the TIWA. However, at that time the COVID-19 pandemic was worsening and Nina's family were in rural Indonesia and local medical institutions lacked the technology and techniques to identify a donor in time for a bone marrow transplant.

At that time she was being kept alive in Taiwan by weekly blood transfusions. However, frequent blood transfusions can have a detrimental effect on the success of a transplant.

In addition, she also had leukopenia, a condition when a person has a reduced number of white blood cells, which increases the risk of infection. As a result, doctors at Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) determined the patient was in urgent need of a transplant, according to TIWA.

With the assistance of TIWA, a TVGH medical team explained the condition to Herlina and her family members in Indonesia via video calls. Doctors said the healthy cells for the transplant should ideally come from a family member, making her two younger sisters, aged 5 and 14, the best candidates for the operation, TIWA said.

Based on humanitarian considerations, the Central Epidemic Command Center decided in June to lift travel restrictions for her mother and sisters to visit Taiwan.

After undergoing special blood tests arranged by TVGH, the 5-year-old sister was identified as a suitable donor for a transplant. The operation was carried out after the three family members completed their 21-day quarantine in Taiwan and provided two consecutive negative COVID-19 test results.

After having received medical treatment in Taiwan for nine months, Nina was discharged from the hospital Thursday, after doctors confirmed she had recovered from the life-threatening illness.

Read more here:
Critically ill Indonesian woman thanks Taiwan for saving life - Taiwan News

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Several drugs that work by targeting genetic alterations in cancer cells have won recent approval from the Food and Drug Administration as treatments for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

Dr. Germame Ajebo, assistant professor of medicine at Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University, shared information on novel treatments for the disease during the recent virtual CURE Educated Patient Leukemia & Lymphoma Summit.

In his talk, Ajebo focused on drugs meant for use in disease that has recurred or become resistant to previous treatments.

DLBCL is a usually aggressive form of the blood cancer known as a B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which affects the immune system. The disease causes rapid growth of tumors in the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, bone marrow or other organs.

Approved by the FDA within the last two years to treat aggressive DLBCL are oral Xpovio (selinexor), Polivy (polatuzumab vedotin-piiq) and Monjuvi (tafasitamab-cxix). In addition, an immunotherapy, the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy Yescarta (axi-cel), was approved to treat the disease in 2017, Ajebo reported.

Read more: Monjuvi-Revlimid Combination Approval Fills Unmet Need for Certain Patients with DLBCL.

Xpovio is a nuclear export inhibitor, which prevents cancerous cells from pushing tumor-suppressing proteins out of their nuclei. This results in tumor suppressors accumulating in the nucleus, where they can work to kill the cell.

In the phase 2b clinical trial that led to its approval which administered Xpovio by itself to 134 previously treated older adult patients the partial response rate (including those with tumor shrinkage) was 16%, the complete response rate (including those with no sign of cancer remaining) was 13% and the rate of stable disease (including patients with no progression of cancer) was 8.2%, Ajebo reported. Looking at all patients who had partial or complete responses, 38% responded for at least six months and 15% for at least 12 months.

The most common side effects that were serious or worse were low blood counts, Ajebo summarized. Other serious side effects included nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, dizziness and infections.

Polivy is an antibody-drug conjugate that uses a targeted drug to deliver a potent chemotherapy directly to cancer cells.

It was approved based on the results of a phase 2 study of 80 previously treated patients who were divided into equally sized groups to receive the chemotherapy Treanda (bendamustine) and the targeted drug Rituxan (rituximab) with or without Polivy every 21 days for six cycles. At the end of treatment, 40% of those receiving the triplet combination had experienced a complete response, compared with 18% of those receiving Treanda and Rituxan alone. In the 63% of patients who achieved a best overall response at any point in the study while receiving the drug triplet, 48% had a response that lasted at least 12 months and 64% responded for at least six months, Ajebo noted.

Major side effects, he said, included tingling or weakness in the extremities, low blood counts, liver toxicity and tumor lysis syndrome, a condition that can damage organs due to blood chemistry issues arising from the quick destruction of tumor cells. The most common side effects of any severity included low blood counts, fatigue, diarrhea and fever.

Monjuvi, a targeted drug that inhibits the activity of the DLBCL-fueling protein CD19, was approved based on results of the phase 2 L-MIND study that demonstrated a 43% complete response rate and an 18% partial response rate in 80 previously treated adult patients who were prescribed the drug along with the targeted medication Revlimid (lenalidomide), with a median duration of response of 21.7 months. The drug is approved in combination with Revlimid for patients with recurrent or resistant DLBCL who are not eligible for, or did not agree to undergo, bone marrow transplant using their own stem cells, Ajebo said.

Serious side effects occurred in 52% of patients, he said, and included low blood counts and infections. The drug caused fatal reactions in 5% of patients, including stroke, respiratory failure, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (a virus that infects the brain) and sudden death.

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See the original post:
Novel Targeted Drugs are Changing the Treatment of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma - Curetoday.com

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